An anniversary and a passionate thought
by RoseScor90
Summary: Written for the joker of the pack challenge!It is the first ever anniversary of the war and Hermione considers the celebration purposeless. Will seeing her friends convince her otherwise?


**Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Harry Potter characters…**

It felt so empty. Purposeless.

Whenever she had come into the village of Hogsmeade, it had been with a work in mind. Be it buying books, quills, meeting Sirius, planning the DA or even sneaking into Hogwarts.

But there had always been a reason why she had come there.

To come there simply to meet her friends seemed a bit…pointless.

Not that she thought meeting her friends pointless; after all, she wouldn't be here without them.

But, they could have met any where else. Why did she have to apparate across half of England was beside her.

And, as usual, she was early, and consequently, they were late.

Hermione had often thought of proposing a new theory.

"Whenever a witch/wizard was early, the witch/wizard they were to meet were invariably late"

As she spotted a head of messy black hair, and a beam of flash lights behind the head, she knew that at least one of them hadn't ditched her.

Escaping the flashes of the reporters' cameras, Harry hurried over to her and said, "Let's go. The plan's been changed. The others' will meet us at the Leaky Cauldron. I offered to tell you and I…"

"Forgot?"

"Yeah!" Harry said as he scratched the back of his head, looking embarrassed.

"Let's go then" she said and apparated before Harry could answer her.

It had been fifteen minutes since she had come to the Leaky Cauldron and had met the rest of them and Harry was yet to make an appearance.

Ron had offered to go look but, Hermione had stopped him.

It was enough that Harry had been caught by the reporters. Ron going there would only increase the delay.

They sat for a further five minutes and Ron was about to go look for Harry when he apparated into the place.

"Hey there, Harry!" Ron was the first to notice that he had arrived.

"How are you, mate? Long time since I saw you. How's France?"

"Nice. How's the shop running?"

"Business is booming and we're thinking of opening a branch at Hogsmeade. You know Fred… he had always wanted to open a shop there"

The subject of Fred was still tender, even after a year had passed by.

They sat in the largest table there and yet, they had to add extra chairs to accommodate every body.

There was a general chorus of 'How are you's and 'How's work' and corresponding answers that every thing was fine.

They all ordered drinks and it was a bit of a chaos before every one managed to get a drink and settle down.

Never one to waste time in silences, Hermione stood up and said, "Hey every one! Hope all's well! I know that some of you have come here amidst a lot of commitments, so, I'd make it short. It has been one year since Harry here," she pointed out, "beat Voldemort"

There were a number of 'hurray's and whoops at this.

"One year of peace that we have enjoyed. One year that we have had to right ourselves and decide what to do next. Most of us have by now decided our paths. We have here, people ranging from Professors at Hogwarts" Neville nodded here, "to Aurors to Quidditch stars. It feels happy to be here, seeing all these happy faces of my friends. But, I hope, no one here has forgotten what we had to do to get here. The external trials and tribulations are over but, what about amongst us? Does every one of us like every one of us here? Certainly not"

She stopped here, looking around the room at all the faces that were confused now.

Harry began to say, "'Mione…"

"No Harry. I need to say this. When I was standing at Hogsmeade," now she directed her voice to the gathering, "I'd thought all of you had ditched me. But, you hadn't"

There was a chorus of 'No way's.

"That struck me. I've been unacceptably uncivil to some of you here, plain rude to some others. I just wanted to say, I'm sorry. I hope I'm doing justice to those who have sacrificed them selves in the war for us to live, and love. No matter what I've said and done in the past, I love every one of you here, for the mere fact that you guys were with me, with us," she indicated herself, Harry and Ron, "when we needed you guys most"

An expectant silence spread and it was Lavender Brown who broke it, by hugging Hermione fiercely, and saying, "I'm sorry too. I just didn't know who to say that. I'm not as brave as you, 'Mione"

The two smiled at each other, just before the rest of the gathering joined them.

A few hours later, when the party was scattered, Ron, Harry and Hermione were seated at a table when Ron asked, "What brought on the outburst?"

"No idea. I just felt like saying this. I wasn't doing any thing wrong, was I?"

"Oh no! You did just the right thing, Hermione. We just never knew you could be so…passionate about things"

"Hey!"

"Cut her some slack, Harry. After all, she'd very well _die_ without sheets of parchment to devour, wouldn't you now, 'Mione? That accounts for being passionate, doesn't it?"

Seeing both of them smirk, she said, "Just because the two of you couldn't concentrate on a page for longer than five seconds…"

The argument continued with the three of them recounting times in their school lives when they had or hadn't chased after books.

There couldn't have been a better first year anniversary for the war.

A/n: Hope it was alright!

R&R!


End file.
